2 Responses to ICE Pilot

For me, it was fear and inexperience. I pulled a trailer on my first overland trek because I was fearful that I would not have enough supplies, and I lacked the experience to know a trailer was not sustainable on the long haul. I wrote about this extensively in The Overland Triker book. Essentially, a trailer makes the rig 10 feet long and highly unmanageable in tight situations. A trailer full of gear also weighs you down, significantly slows your progress, and adds excessive stress to your joints and feet, thereby causing injuries that would not likely occur if running light. On subsequent trips without a trailer, I found the ride much more enjoyable by a huge factor, made much more progress each day, and did not encounter foot injuries from the pressures of pulling so much weight. Stores come along often enough even on remote routes that I found carrying a couple of days worth of food was sufficient as a minimum. On that first trailered trip, I carried two weeks worth of food, which amounted to 50 pounds (not to mention that my trailer and trunk weighed 36 pounds, which was just dead weight so that I could carry even more weight. My traveling weight for the first trailered trip was 375 pounds (including my body), but my traveling weight for the next trip without a trailer was 275 pounds – losing 100 pounds makes trike touring a joy! Having done it both ways was a good experience for me because I can speak to the pros and cons from a viewpoint beyond mere mental speculation. My advice? Do not pull a trailer for overland treks. Learn to get it all on the trike, which means less stuff. Once you have that mastered on weekend overnights and shorter regional journeys, then head out cross country in a state of triangular bliss!

All About Tricycles

Steve’s Rural Cop Days

Dan’s Simple Living

William’s Longevity Guide

Mark’s Flute Music CD

Pannier Volume Conversion:

One liter equals 61 cubic inches. Doing the math, if a pair of cargo bags is 60 liters, such as the Arkel RT-60 recumbent panniers, this converts to 3,660 cubic inches (60x61). Pannier manufacturers are known to express size both ways, which can be frustrating to a potential customer attempting to compare two different companies. Visualizing cubic inches may be challenging, thus converting to liters may help the mind's analytical eye.